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Between Border and Bazaar: Central Asia’s Informal Economy

2018; Routledge; Volume: 49; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00472336.2018.1532017

1752-7554

Hasan H. Karrar,

Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

The disintegration of the Soviet Union spurred a transnational trade in consumer goods. Bazaars, which proliferated across the former Soviet Union, including in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that is the focus of this article, became nodes in this informal trade. This article makes three arguments: (i) Soviet successor states capitalised on the new informal economy which provided employment to millions when economies were in decline. Conversely, ongoing developments, particularly in Kazakhstan, seek to modernise the bazaars that emerged after the Soviet Union. (ii) The movement of people and goods – between border and bazaar, and in case of re-exports, on to another border – are illustrative of a multi-dimensional informal economy evidenced in rent extraction, regulation of bazaars, and in trader networks. (iii) The bazaar-centred economy relies on checkpoint politics that establish border regimes, enabling mobility.